USB Audio Problems Late 2013 iMac - Clicking / Popping / Dropouts

I bought the Scarlett 2i2 thinking my Apogee One had died since it wasn't working well with my new late 2013 iMac i7 3TB FusionDrive, to find out that it didn't work well either!

Both had similar issues - clicking and popping during record and monitoring.

Apogee One was a bit more severe though.

Scarlett 2i2 works slightly better recording-wise, however when recording a vocal track the timing seems to slowly offset more and more to the backing track. Also the monitoring starts off fine but eventually crackles and distorts the audio.

Another issue I noticed which may or may not affect others is the really bad monitoring latency (at least with the Apogee One) which I never had a problem with on my previous iMac which was running Mountain Lion (separate SSD + HDD). The Scarlett 2i2 has direct monitoring which bypassed the issue, but alas still suffered from the monitoring issues mentioned above.

Now I'm left with no way to record high quality audio on my brand new iMac!

I might take the plunge and consider splitting up my Fusion Drive...can anyone else confirm that splitting their Fusion Drive fixed this problem?

Thanks Barraccus!

I would like to happily confirm that splitting the fusion drive has also fixed my problems!

My Scarlett 2i2 now works perfectly in class-compliant mode on my late -2013 27" iMac 3TB Fusion Drive 3.5GHz i7 Haswell. Plugged straight into the USB 3 port.

I installed Mavericks onto my SSD and just loaded up an empty project on Logic Pro X and just started recording some vocals and played back some beautiful crisp recorded audio with not a pop to be heard !

Strongly suggest anyone who is in my situation to try it out.

I actually tried booting Mavericks from an external first but I don't know if I was just using an old external or what, but it was really slow and didn't seem to show any files on my other external drives, and upon restarting, wouldn't even boot up properly (boots up to a white screen, mouse and keyboard working but nothing to interface with)

Only bad thing is now I have to restore all my files again...

So much for Fusion Drives....

Apple did us all a dmage by not being compliant with the market in their newer late 2013 models including the imac.

I have tried so far:

-saffire pro 40 (sometimes turn on but no audio through)

-Presonus 1818, no sound at all. (worked fine on my old 2011 macbook pro)

-Motu ultralite MK3 (very shaky opperation...still testing it but for sure the photobooth video recording will crash every single time using your audio card)

I have a 27" i5 SATA imac with Mavericks.

When an item such as a soundcard is marked as being compatible with mac it means it has been tested and works with mac, but for Apple to turn around on a newer modles and change their hardware to where all these 3rd party items are incompatible seems illegal to me (look at my experience with the Presonus 1818 above). I feel that I have been decieved.

😠

Same problem here

late 2013 iMac 27", audioengine D1 external DAC connected over USB = constant clicking, popping and noise.

Same problem here.

Heard that the Fusion Drive is the reason for all these problems =/

imac late 2013

1tb fusion drive

tried two different USB microphones.

After 2 minutes the recording stops and I only here noises....

+1, same problem. Question, Barraccus, will installing or ordering one with Flash Storage solved this?

+1, same problem.

- iMac 21" late 2013, fusion drive

- Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6

Jaryl,

I bought the iMac 27" 1TB Fusion Drive, and returned it and ordered the same with the 1TB SSD. I am running Logic Pro X using the Scarlett 2i2 (compliant mode driver) with no problems so far. It has been about three weeks.

For everyone's info, after the fresh install, still getting the clickings and poppings, I'm now getting unexpected shutdowns every now and then. Besides the Fusion Drive problem, I think I have some hardware problem too.

Hi again,

I splitted the Fusion drive into a SSD and a HDD.

All problems are gone now.

Definetly a Fusion Drive issue.

Really disappointing IMO. Would've chosen the 256 GB SSD version if I knew that stuff before.

Hi, I have the same problems as you.

Buy an imac late 2013 with fusiondrive. imac came with Mountain Lion and upgrading to Mavericks and these problems appeared.

I use a Burson DAC and the noise was unbearable, so I went back to Mountain Lion and then install was perfect.

The only problem is that with Mountain Lion, if I upload frequency 44.1khz to 48, 88 or 96khz clicks and pops are heard using itunes, vlc, quick time etc ... but if I use Audirvana the sound is perfect.

The problem is some kind of incompatibility with the new imac OSX.

Apple should give a solution!

I have this very issue as well. For a while I thought it was my Digisdesign 002 just dropping sync, but a new interface has issues as well. When I tried both on my old macbook, no problems.

I have the 3TB fusion drive.

Is there anything Apple Care can really do for this?

When you guys talk about using an external drive -- do you essnetially ignore the FD, or are you using it for data?

I have the 3tb drive and the same problem. I fixed it by partioning the drive in 2. Then reinstalled Mavericks. Just download it and the installer will ask where you want to install the OS. Install onto your new partition. I run Cubase so I had to redownload that as well but finally everything works perfectly. When I switch back to the other partition I get the audio drop outs again.

This is a workaround that I was advised to take from an AppleCare guy. I hope that when the next Mavericks update comes, I will be able to put the computer back to how it should be.

Hope this helps. It's a lot of work to do but it definitely works for me. I have a Motif XS rack and am using a thunderbolt to FireWire connector, 800 to 400 FW cable and it works perfectly now.